Railroaders place to shoot the shit.

Been kicking in to my IRA, mutual fund, it is down 50% and if it recovers by the time I retire, I will be alright.

Senate Cancels Vote On Doomed Auto Bailout

 CBS News Interactive: About Detroit's Big 3 Bailout

WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate's top Democrat has called off a planned vote this week on a $25 billion auto industry bailout.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that he wanted to figure out some way to help Detroit's struggling Big Three but that efforts to do so had stalled.

The White House and congressional Republicans rejected Democrats' plan to dip into the $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund to finance loans to U.S. automakers.

A bipartisan group from auto industry states is working to cut a deal on a scaled-down aid package. If agreement can be reached, Reid said the Senate could still vote on it as part of a measure to extend jobless benefits.

Detroit's Big Three auto executives returned to Capitol Hill Wednesday to ask skeptical lawmakers for a $25 billion lifeline to keep their crippled industry from collapsing.

The heads of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler appeared before the House Financial Services Committee, making the same plea they made Tuesday to the Senate Banking Committee. But they face stiff opposition from Republicans on the Hill, as well as the White House.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said Wednesday he doesn't believe there will be a turnaround in the troubled U.S. auto industry until its top management is ousted and the manufacturing model sacked.

"I don't think they have immediate plans to change their model, which is a model of failure," Shelby told CBS' The Early Show, a day after the top executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler came to Congress to plead for a $25 billion "bridge loan" to avert layoffs and plant closings.

"I wish they would. I know they're in dire circumstances, but somebody has to stick up for the taxpayers."

But Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Early Show that bankruptcy would not lead to a fresh start for the struggling companies and would only hurt others who rely on the industry.

"Bankruptcy would be very disruptive in the long term. Bankruptcy is a favorite spectator sport for politicians and experts who don't have to engage in it. You have a whole network of suppliers, small businesses and others who would get stiffed, to use the legal term, in a bankruptcy."

Frank also said bankruptcy could mean abrogation of labor contracts. "We already have too much union busting," said Frank.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to lower expectations for emergency legislation, saying Wednesday that it's the Bush administration's responsibility to save the once-mighty carmakers from collapse.

The Nevada Democrat also said that "no one should be overly concerned" if Congress can't agree on a bill to speed $25 billion in new loans to the auto industry.

Although Reid said he still hopes Congress can reach a deal on assistance this week. If not, he said that it "will still be up to the White House and the Treasury Department" to do the job.

Local dealers also pressed their influence on Capitol Hill, blanketing congressional offices this week to make the argument to legislators that an auto bailout is necessary to prevent pillars of thousands of local communities from crumbling.

Whatever the various arguments about options, Detroit is running out of time.

Facing a less-than-receptive greeting Tuesday, General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner warned that the failure of the U.S. auto industry could lead to a loss of 3 million jobs within the first year and ripple throughout communities around the country.

"This is all about a lot more than just Detroit. It's about saving the U.S. economy from a catastrophic collapse," Wagoner said.

I don't think they have immediate plans to change their model, which is a model of failure. I wish they would. I know they're in dire circumstances, but somebody has to stick up for the taxpayers.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala, Senate Banking CommitteeDire assessments aside, the rescue plan appeared stalled on Capitol Hill, opposed by the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress who are reluctant to use the Treasury Department's $700 billion financial bailout program to come up with the $25 billion in loans.

"You're asking an awful lot," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. "I'd like to tell you that in the next couple of days this is going to happen. I don't think it is."

A Senate vote on an automotive bailout plan, which would also extend jobless benefits, could come as early as Thursday, but it currently lacks the support to advance.

In an op-ed essay in Wednesday's editions of The New York Times, Mitt Romney, a candidate for this year's Republican presidential nomination, wrote: "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."

Romney, who was born in Detroit and whose father was an auto industry executive, wrote: "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

Rank and file Republicans and Democrats from states heavily affected by the auto industry worked behind the scenes trying to develop a compromise that could speed some aid to the automakers before year's end. But it was an uphill fight.

Automakers were running into bailout fatigue on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers complained that many of the industry's problems were self-made, citing their past reliance upon gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs and opposition to tougher fuel efficiency regulations. Many wondered if the companies would be back for more money in a year.

"A lot of people think you've already failed, that your model has failed, that you're here to get life support," said Shelby.

Chrysler LLC CEO Bob Nardelli rejected suggestions that the automakers should seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection similar to airlines that later emerged restructured and leaner. "We just cannot be confident that we will be able to successfully emerge from bankruptcy," Nardelli said. Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally said the three automakers are highly interdependent.

The financial situation for the automakers grows more precarious by the day. Cash-strapped GM said Tuesday it would delay reimbursing its dealers for rebates and other sales incentives and could run out of cash by year's end without government aid.

Given the concerns, Democrats in the Senate discussed but rejected the option favored by the White House and GOP lawmakers to let the auto industry use a $25 billion loan program created by Congress in September - designed to help the companies develop more fuel-efficient vehicles - to tide them over until President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other senior Democrats, who count environmental groups among their strongest supporters, have vehemently opposed that approach because it would divert federal money intended to develop vehicles that use less gasoline.

(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This mat

Astrobuck10 wrote:

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Troll wrote:

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I see the CEO's flew to Washington to beg for money in their private jets.

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Send 'em deadhead freight next time.
Taxis are pretty well banded here now.

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The Z train will pick you guys up in about 3 hours. Make sure you have plenty of air in your escape scuba, there is a 5 mph slow order in tunnel 3.

United Auto Workers Say They'll Renegotiate

 CBS News Interactive: About Detroit's Big 3 Bailout

DETROIT (AP) United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Wednesday that the union is willing to change its contract and will delay billions of dollars in payments to a union-run health care trust in an effort to help the struggling Detroit Three automakers.

Gettelfinger also said the union will modify the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers are paid up to 95 percent of their salaries while not working, but he did not give specifics.

"We're going to sit down and work out the mechanics," Gettelfinger said at a news conference after meeting with local union officials. "We're a little unclear on some of the issues."

One local union member who was in the meeting said the changes to the jobs bank would nearly eliminate it. The member asked not to be identified because the details had not been made public.

Gettelfinger stopped short of saying the union would reopen contract talks with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. but said it would be willing to return to the bargaining table to change some terms.

The UAW's efforts to help the Detroit Three get up to $34 billion in government loans come after GM and Chrysler said they are perilously low on cash and need government help before the end of the year. Ford says it has enough borrowed cash to make it through 2009 and may not need government help.

Members of Congress last month criticized the automakers for paying workers who are not on the job.

The CEOs of all three automakers are heading to Washington for Congressional hearings Thursday and Friday on their request for a total of $34 billion in government loans to help them weather a recession and the worst auto sales climate in 26 years.

Congressional leaders demanded business plans from all three that include a reduction in labor costs so Detroit is more competitive with foreign automakers with U.S. factories. The companies submitted their plans to Congress on Tuesday.

Gettelfinger declined to say whether renewed negotiations with the automakers would mean a cut in wages.

He also said the union will run a television ad in Maine, Kentucky, Indiana and Minnesota to put the faces of union workers on the controversy over the loans. The ads presumably are designed to pressure Congressional opponents of the loans.

(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, seen in this on Sept. 26, 2007 file photo, says the $25 billion already set aside for automakers isn't a bailout, but a bridge.

They are fucked.